Rot and Blossom
by The Bookbinder's Daughter
Summary: [Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister] A loose collection of Clara drabbles and ficlets, out of chronological order.


Disclaimer: I don't own any part of this, and I'm running out of interesting ways to say it.

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**I. Whose Walls Were Glass**

She paces the tulip shed, a room in a room, and measures its length and breadth in the units of her breathing – three by five, more often than not.

She tires quickly of the flowers, for mirrors make children poor friends, and tumbles out onto grass of summer lemon.

She can climb the walls, she tells herself, for the space between each brick is wide, and her fingers and feet are small.

She can, but she _won't_. She makes this solemn, silent pact, shaking hands with the sunlight. She'll come back into the world as a queen out of exile – through the door, and not in secret.

**II.Question**

_Clarissa_, he says – he still calls her that, behind doors – _Clarissa, have you held her?_ His voice is hushed, but his eyes are fever-bright. He is delighted with fatherhood, even without an heir; it is more than she expected of him.

He has missed the birth, early by a week; gone for two months on the hazy business of state. Long enough for her to forget the smell of him, the perfume of autumn leaves, heaped and damp. Not an unpleasant smell, but ever a reminder of the rot that lives in his flesh, and perhaps now in his mind as well.

And so she forgives him his question, though grudgingly. For what mother, however frail, however long bedridden, would not cast arm around her first – or any – child between birth and fourth day? Even Margarethe, she is sure, must have done so, even with Ruth.

_Yes_, she says, and turns her head away. _I have held her._

**III. Legacy**

_What a legacy of beauty your mother leaves behind_, the Crow murmurs, bent down to her, in the manner of a knight offering service.

She turns the word over in her mind, woken past midnight by giggles and clinking glass. The Crow is wrong, she decides: for a legacy is thing to be remembered by.

And who will remember her mother, if her father forgets?

**IV. The Most Endless Sea**

_Clarissa_. He coughs, and she wipes away spittle from the corner of his mouth. _This is not the end. I've had worse spells and yet come back; I'll come back again, at least this once more. And we'll go sailing on a fine ship, Clarissa; we'll show our girls the sea. _His lungs shake him; he clenches her wrist; relaxes. _Yes, we'll show them the green sea._

It might be true. Not his dream of sailing with her, of course; he puts forth that impossibility every month, ill or no, and every month that green sea glows with tulip blue. But he might return to health; he has before, and often.

He coughs, she wipes; her hand comes away, side slick with rose.

She remembers Margarethe, arms full of bright sheets, and wipes his blood on the corner of the pillow, where he can't see.

**V. Godmother**

She limps, hobbles, strides, halts by turns, wandering in the vague direction of the sea, or home; it's hard to tell which, on strange roads in the dark.

She pauses, swaying; no walls to catch her here. She shivers, and breathes through the wet of her clinging veil, and is too tired now for tears.

The faint scrabble of soaked wood on soaked earth comes behind her, and the old dame appears at Clara's elbow, straight as she can make herself, no weight on her walking sticks.

_Take my arm, my girl,_ she rasps. _It's not a night for fine ladies to be out alone, with wind and rain and halls on fire. But you'll be safe as houses with me, and I'll see you back to yours._ Clara huddles away, and she softens her voice, as much as she can. _Come, girl. I'll ask you no questions, nor curse your babe. Put your arm through mine, my changeling, and make my other subjects jealous, to know you've stepped with queens._

_And princes_, Clara whispers, half-awake in the cold and half-blind in black lace.

The old dame laughs: a genuine cackle. _Queens are less trouble, my girl. Now scrape that thing from your face, and come along. You've picked a poor place to be lost._

And so Clara tucks a numb hand into her elbow, and weeps against the woman's shoulder.


End file.
